


Sunday

by Indybaggins



Category: Whose Line Is It Anyway? RPF
Genre: Character Study, Compatibility, Established Relationship, Love, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2006-08-20
Updated: 2006-08-20
Packaged: 2018-01-11 18:09:03
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,812
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1176234
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Indybaggins/pseuds/Indybaggins
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Every time they turn and twist into bed together they fit into to each other like a one-time puzzle, frayed around the edges but never the same, always another mystery combination…"</p>
            </blockquote>





	Sunday

 

 

Ryan opens his eyes, and even though he must have dozed off afterwards, his body still feels flushed and sweaty, radiating the memory of a rough and undefined kind of morning sex. He knows it’s still early; he can spot a calm and sleeping form to his one side, and a twisting, probably dreaming one to his other, but he knows he won’t stay in bed any longer. Not today. There is a vague hunger, a hunger for air and space and normality, although this is almost more normal to him than anything else, that leaves him unable to bear the sinking feeling of melting into another’s body. There is tingling of grey in the sky combined with the familiar unrest in his body that urges him to leave, to free himself from the tangled web of bed sheets and limbs and age-old emotions, and he does so, silent, face drawn. 

He doesn’t look back at those in the bed he probably woke by leaving, but he imagines their gazes on his retreating, bare back. He expects it would be mildly despising from one pair of eyes, bitterly knowing from the other. He doesn’t know which one would affect him most. 

He fumbles for his cigarettes in his pants pocket as he shuffles down the stairs. He’s not hurrying, he’s too old for running away from beds that still smell of sex, and warm embraces and he’s not walking down with a certain flair either because he’s not happy, he’s never really happy, that much he has learned about himself in his forty-odd something years. But he is descending with the knowledge that no one will follow him, that he’s not breaking any kind of bond or that he’s not even raising any eyebrows because he knows, here, here he can be himself; they know, and it does make him feel _even_ , in a way. 

He’d use the word “balanced”, if his long fingers weren’t so shaky handling the lighter, if he didn’t have a lingering headache from last night’s drinking, if it wasn’t raining on what was supposed to be a sunny morning, if… 

He exhales slowly while he opens the porch door and lets it smack behind him. He walks out to the edge of the porch, protecting his cigarette from the draft and revelling in the way some errant spats of rain find their way under the roof to his scorching body, how the wind turns his heated limbs into something more stiff but more manageable, less frenzied in feeling. 

He takes his second drag and exhales even slower, trying to feel the smoke on his tongue before he coughs, loud and sharp in the morning air. 

  


\---

 

Greg gets up from their jungle of sheets, so much less impenetrable now that the gangly form of Ryan is gone, to open one of the fogged up bedroom windows, dressed in nothing but dark boxers and some grey socks. 

He imagines Colin is smiling at the sight in the bed behind him, but he doesn’t care; it seems tolerable, like a small child that can’t help but giggle at an imperfection. As he hears Ryan’s muted cough through the window he almost bitterly wishes he was down there, smoking in the middle of some dreary morning, getting wet and cold and erasing all traces of closeness, making it all seem somewhat more tolerable in his own way, but he knows he’s outgrown that feeling, running away. Or maybe he never really wanted to in the first place. 

As he turns around and finds Colin not smiling, but looking at him with a studious expression, a faint hint of interest in his eyes, he realises he doesn’t know anything yet. Every time they turn and twist into bed together they fit into to each other like a one-time puzzle, frayed around the edges but never the same, always another mystery combination, like the one right there on the bed when Colin, unconsciously or not, licks his reddish lips in a way that reminds him of where those lips were just a while ago. 

And a movement later there is only the feel of Colin, who was completely naked under the sheets to begin with, and their kiss, all tongue and teeth and a vague pulsating need to establish something now Ryan isn’t there. He goes with it; he always does, because it fills the void Ryan’s leaving made, changes the focus to just the two of them. And they curl into each other, hands gripping arms too tightly, leaving momentary marks where there was no need. 

It ends as abruptly as it started, with an awkwardly placed kiss from Greg and a humorous smirk from Colin. In a way they know each other too well, he thinks. 

When he scurries off the bed to shower, Colin flirtatiously slaps his but, and he bursts out laughing, suddenly genuinely happy, genuinely comfortable, even if only for a single moment in their bedroom on a Sunday morning. 

They banter back and forth while Colin gathers up the sheets and clothes, and at one point he throws a pillow at Colin before he makes his escape for the bathroom, accompanied by a shrieking cry from Colin and fits of laughter. 

As he stands under a blaring hot stream of water a couple minutes later, still slightly amused, rinsing off traces from Ryan and Colin alike, he thinks back on the previous night, the week before that, the ten years before that. 

Truth is he still prefers Ryan’s touch. He’ll make some remark about how “Ryan’s dick is the best fuck anyway” while eyeing Colin, and Colin will get it, a small smile on his face because he gets what he isn’t saying more than perhaps even Ryan does, that Greg _needs_. He wants to be roughly turned onto his stomach and fucked, fucked until there is no line between what obscenities are in his mind and what he’s screaming, and it’s like venting, with harsh groaning sounds, and Ryan’s heated breathing on his neck, and it is _supposed_ to goddamn hurt, because it’s Ryan, and it’s him, and that’s who they are. 

But when the world feels _wrong_ , wrong in a way that for him means he’ll start drinking twice as much and only the dark humor of cynical remarks is left, he’ll want Colin. He doesn’t ask, ever, but Colin gets that too and when he needs it, Colin will allow him to grab his thighs in bruising grips. Allow him to lead him into a slow and bruising kind of sex, with sweaty hands and chilled bodies. And it works too. For them, it’s like emerging into a calm sea, and they lock Ryan out until he’s pissed off but he doesn’t leave them, not then. He’ll lie on the edge of the bed and look at them, even stretch out his hand ever once in a while, as if to reach out and stroke through Greg’s hair, but then he doesn’t. 

Greg knows he would love to be bitter about this. Then again, he loves to be bitter about anything, and he laughs a bit at his own foolishness when he spots a small bruise on his neck in the mirror, not remembering who gave it to him last night, and it feels like a big deal all of a sudden. He momentarily wonders if it was Ryan. Ryan with the burning tension behind his eyes, Ryan who’ll be everything for you in a single moment, and then turn around and walk away just as easily. Colin is the one who handles Ryan when he’s like that. He’s the one who knows when to let him run, and when to go after him with tender kisses and a sense of romance, and Greg feels a pinch for never being able to learn that much about Ryan himself. 

Sometimes he’s convinced they’re outright lunatics, to want to live this way. But deep down, he does love it. The tensions and cries and fucking amazing sex, all of it. The truth is he’s found more happiness in that bed right there than he had ever realised would have… and it’s almost like a dream come true, sometimes. 

 

\---

 

Ryan lights a second cigarette, the shaking of his hands subdued, his headache slowly lifting. He looks up at the first floor window, and sees it’s opened now. So he did wake them then. 

A couple minutes later, he hears an abrupt, slightly nasal laugh from Greg, and gentler, almost-giggles from Colin coming through the window. A couple years ago, it would have ticked his curiosity as to why Greg would be laughing as loudly, as openly as that. These days, it’s almost normal, and that thought makes a brief smile flicker over his face. 

Greg is the one to whom all this was supposed to be just a game, Ryan remembers, just a mindfuck combined with a real fuck, some strange exhilaration of two people in his bed, but nothing more. He had always known that that wasn’t true though. He knew right from the beginning, from the first time Greg took off his glasses in bed and passed them along to him, looking ridiculously young and trusting. But he never wanted to understand that, wanted Greg to be the one that was disposable when needed. Back then, he was convinced Greg had never loved anyone else quite like he loved him, and it was a terrifying thought, to be the centre of so much wit and intelligence and stinging pain, and without Colin, he was sure he would never have been able to take it. 

Without Greg the fullness of Colin’s adoration would have left him feeling drained of his own soul, would have driven him into something lethargic and desperate after a while. 

He involuntarily snickers as he hears Colin yell “…you fucking bastard!”, in obvious good spirits. He doesn’t even really know how they ever got to this point, but as far as he’s concerned, it’s a damn good one. 

 

\---

 

As Colin heads downstairs, he considers cooking breakfast. Or brunch, or lunch, whatever the time is. It’s Sunday, so they don’t make a point of keeping track of much of anything. He knows he doesn’t need to cook, both Greg and Ryan would live on coffee and cigarettes happily ever after. But he does anyway because he realises it makes _him_ happy, to putter around the kitchen, to pretend not to notice when Ryan snags a piece of bacon and Greg rolls his eyes behind his back. 

Deep down, he had always known what he wanted. He just never went for it. He let life pass by, do whatever it so sorely wanted of him. Even when there was Ryan, to love from afar and then closely, to hide in his arms and to kiss the smile on his lips. Ryan was the love of his life, hands down. He had fallen for him perhaps the very first time he had met him, Ryan barely out of his teens, gangly and blonde and a rumbling laugh he slowly grew addicted to. They would lock themselves in hotel rooms, and have the kind of slow and scorching sex that would make them cry, both of them, because it was impossible to be together and impossible not to. 

Ryan had broken his heart. Multiple times. Purposely, he was certain of it. Maybe they both thought everything they felt for each other could be turned into bitterness if only they tried hard enough.

It wasn’t until many years and fights later, when Greg pushed him against a wall and asked him “what the fuck are you going to do now? Huh? Do you even know what you goddamn want?” that he did. And now he was here, sharing a bed and a life that could have been a late-night fantasy, only it isn’t, it’s rough and it’s messy and it hurts but it’s great, he thinks, it’s great.

And it’s not like there’s some magical equilibrium in their bed; they all want different pieces of each other and it’ll ignite and torture and annoy, but in the end they accept it. It exists somewhere between an undesired fate and a consciously heroic choice they made and they stopped defining it as soon as it happed really. For Colin it just is, and he smiles as he picks the eggs from the fridge and turns on the stove. 

 

\---

 

Ryan stubs out his cigarette, and stands in the rain for just a couple moments longer. He can hear them in the kitchen now, the rattling of a coffee pot, the resonating of a laugh and a rumbling reply, alerting him to the fact that his life is in there, waiting for him. 

When he goes back in, the heat is almost oppressive. Colin is behind the stove, scrambling eggs in a pan, listening to Greg who’s reading from today’s paper and is snorting over some private joke between them. And he knows it’s not private; he knows he could ask, but he also feels the warmth between them, the slow and thorough fondness, and it makes him feel calm in a way, to know that that is there when he isn’t. So he doesn’t intrude and waits in the doorway until they turn and notice him. When they do it’s almost simultaneously, Colin with a fond smile and Greg with a fast flicker of eyes over the paper and a smirk of lips around a coffee cup. 

When he passes Colin he moves close enough to feel a trace of his shirt, sexual and intrusive in a silently recognised hello, and then slides on the bench to sit across from Greg. The seat is lined with awful purple cushions and he suddenly has a flaming suspicion Greg picked those out because Colin hates purple and he almost laughs out loud, laughs at how abundantly flamboyant Greg’s taste can be and how naggingly motherly Colin is adding salt to the eggs. 

Years ago he would have taken off his slipper to trace his foot over Greg’s crotch under the table, perhaps, delighting in the way Colin’s shoulders tensed once he knew what they were doing. Or he would have walked up to Colin and kissed his neck, seductively, until he stopped worrying about the eggs and tried to hide his eager hard-on by leaning against the kitchen counter, Greg’s eyes piercing holes in their backs. 

Now, Colin hands him a plate of eggs with a wink and a lingering touch of his hand, before he sits down and leans close to Greg, their shoulders bumping, to read something from his newspaper. 

And suddenly he wonders…. From the very beginning they set out in stone that Colin was the more sensitive one. The one that would find this soul-tearing. He can’t imagine that being true now. He can still see his expression, the first time they both went down on him, pure wonder, it was. Embarrassment too, but a certain kind of wonder and acceptance at the same time. 

Colin loves them both, Ryan knows that. But Colin loved him first, and sometimes he felt the guilt strangle him until he was ready to run off into the sunset with him. 

It took him a couple years to understand Colin wouldn’t have let him do that. 

When he realises they are talking to him, he looks up to see a dual expression of weary expectation mirrored in Colin and Greg’s eyes. When Greg says “you haven’t been listening have you?” He summons up the decency to turn his eyes towards his plate, and go “Eh…” 

They both laugh and make some remarks about “Stiles not being a morning person”, and he accepts it with grace. 

 

After breakfast they both join him on the porch, Colin standing near the edge, close to the rain until little silver drops line his hair and he leans back to smile up at the sky. Greg and he stand closer to the building, almost huddled together, sharing a light morning hang-over and a cigarette. They both look at Colin, who doesn’t seem to be aware they watch him, and it’s completely silent, the only sounds are their breathing and the faded hum of rain hitting the roof. 

When Colin comes back he slips under Ryan’s arm, and, breaking the silence, asks for a smoke too. Greg winks and says something about all the times Colin has tried to quit. Colin pretends to hit him over the head, and they share a quiet laugh between the three of them, lights in their eyes. 

They can share moments like that now and it _fits_ , Ryan thinks, it works; his life actually _works_ now. And in that instant, he wants to consider calling it “being happy”, despite the rain.

 

 

 

 


End file.
